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Ask HN: Has anyone made any serious money selling Android apps?

• anm89 4y ago
  My friend makes about $300k a year on a fitness app. I can tell you it's not a get rich quick scheme. It has taken him years to build up and he was a talented programmer who probably could have made that same money at FAANG.
• asfarley 4y ago
  I made a turn-counting app for traffic surveys. It’s basically a button-press counter. I needed it for my own use, and there was already one on the market for about $35 so I decided to reimplement it myself and sell it for $2. So far I have made about $88 although I have not gotten a payout.
• bmalicoat 4y ago
  I put a recent game out on both Android and iOS (https://www.downwordly.com/ https://www.downwordly.com/). Admittedly it isn't apples to apples because the game modes and pricing models differ^. That said, iOS has made 10x more for me. Most of that is probably attributed to being Game of the Day and featuring in the word games section on iOS. ^iOS uses GameCenter for turn based multiplayer so a $2.99 IAP unlocks unlimited concurrent multiplayer games and some other modes, whereas Android is not free to play and instead is just $.99 to buy, but with no multiplayer. Probably way too many variables to provide any meaningful conclusions on the Play Store!
• hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
  Only worked in mobile gaming industry. Nowadays it's even difficult for professional companies to push out profitable mobile games. One company I know about tried a couple of years, made a couple of failed games and closed door eventually. I'd argue nowadays it's extremely difficult for individuals to create profitable Android games. The majority of the games are those driven by micro-transaction and/or ads and individuals simply cannot compete with professionals. On the other side, it might be possible to target a niche market and grab a few hundred/thousand bucks. For example the guy who made Wizardry clones definitely sold a few hundred copies.
• j_4 4y ago
  Are you interested in games as well? I recently released my first game on Android, very much a commercial endeavor but with a model that I somewhat expected too friendly for its own good - ad-free demo, single IAP for the full game. It made $10k over the first month and so far it seems to be still accelerating. I'm yet to release on iOS, I expected the Android port to be a drop in the bucket but this is going to go a long way in sustaining me as an indie game dev.
  • zigzag312 4y ago
    That sounds very good for a first game. Did it have any following before the release? > ad-free demo, single IAP for the full game Is there any backslash from the demo-only players (eg. leaving bad reviews since they need to pay to access full game)? Care to share the link to the game?
    • j_4 4y ago
      > Did it have any following before the release? Yeah, the game first released on Steam last year and had a decent following from that, ~15k sales and ~200k activations from a charity bundle. > Is there any backslash from the demo-only players (eg. leaving bad reviews since they need to pay to access full game)? There is some backlash, but honestly much less than I expected. I tend to politely respond to these reviews that they're unreasonable, and like half get removed or adjusted. In general there have been far more people explicitly grateful for this model, saying they probably wouldn't have picked up the game otherwise. My game is Pawnbarian - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.j4nw.Pawnbarian https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.j4nw.Pawnb... For another recent-ish game that seems to have had great success with this kind of model (+ it's just a jolly good time), check out Slice & Dice - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.tann.dice https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com.tann.d...
      • zigzag312 4y ago
        Thanks! I think it's a good model and I wish app stores supported it better. If store would indicate that it's a free demo and display the price for full version, user's expectations would be managed better, as many skip or just skim over a description. Good luck with iOS release :)
• terpimost 4y ago
  We did a cool game. Realized that it is impossible to market to profit. No ads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livetyping.trigono https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livetyping... Unfortunately Apple removed it from app store due to some stupid reason. I think if your app isn’t a huge investment/hit and you are committing to long term support it (subscription) there is no way you can make good money. Hyper casual games are huge investments since they got good metrics (takes time and budget to achieve such) and publishers are pouring money on them. So if its not an app/service with subscription and its not subscription based game and its not hyper casual hit with a big publisher behind… it is got to be a good game like here https://noodlecake.com/games/ https://noodlecake.com/games/. But if its a good game you probably are about Steam/Nintendo/Xbox/PS
• ghoomketu 4y ago
  Hey guys.. Just wanted to say a big thanks for all your replies. I was exploring developing an android app but after reading all these comments I'd rather stick to good old saas for now. edit: Maybe i'll add an app to grow my saas than think of money making from selling apps insted.
• napolux 4y ago
  My experience on iOS: even with an app featured by apple I didn't made much (around 100$/month before fading away). The app was a paid app with IAP. Then moved to freemium... Still no success. Other apps I've made were always around 5$ per month. I strongly believe that the "non-gaming" app business is flawed. Or you offer a superb app for peanuts (e.g. Procreate is wonderful, but I paid it 10$, and it's worth way more IMHO) or you trick people with subscriptions which are really sketchy to me. Games are a different story btw.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    I'm not sure subscriptions are a "trick" but random little subscriptions are very off-putting to me. Every one is a money leak. I'll very deliberately pay for some that provide me value--a handful of streaming services for example. But not some random utility app that costs $5/month.
    • napolux 4y ago
      > But not some random utility app that costs $5/month. that's what i'm talking about when i say "sketchy"
  • mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    Seems like consumers are way more price sensitive these days, and can accurately assess whether they are getting value from a subscription.
• brandonb 4y ago
  I helped build an app that does ~$1m in annual revenue, and 75+% of revenue came from iPhone. That ratio seems to be in line with global stats on app store revenue, which show $72.3B of total revenue for the Apple App Store compared to $38.6 for Google Play: https://webtribunal.net/blog/app-revenue-statistics/#gref https://webtribunal.net/blog/app-revenue-statistics/#gref Apps are a hits-driven industry. The top apps generate about $82,500 per day but only 0.01% of apps make money. IMO, the Play Store tax isn't a huge deal. They've lowered their take from 30% to to 15%: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10632485?hl=en#:~:text=15%25%20service%20fee%20for%20the,sell%20digital%20goods%20or%20services https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ....
  • bombcar 4y ago
    > only 0.01% of apps make money. This is the key stat - you can sell your app and maybe make some coin, or you can make it free and shove it full of ads and definitely get some (small amount) of coin. Making a big success is unlikely; but if you find a targeted niche that you're already involved in you may be able to make a small success.
• ageitgey 4y ago
  In my experience, the time to make money selling mobile apps was 2008-2012 or so. The market is totally different now. In my opinion, has never been harder to make money charging money for apps: - Competition is huge (including underhanded competition that will clone any successful app instantly) - Customer appetite to pay for "apps" is near zero. Customers don't even want to download more apps, let alone pay money for them. - Programs like Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass have further eroded the idea of paying for apps - Ad-driven trash apps and poor app store ranking/discoverability have further driven consumers away from trying new apps in app stores Of course lots of successful businesses use apps as part of their business model. But very few are making money from selling the app itself unless they have a really good niche figured out.
  • octobus2021 4y ago
    I started a company making and selling Android games (phone and tablets) around 2010. Made 5 games with 0 revenue, however couple years later Google Ads found widespread fraud and they re-distributed some earnings and I ended up with a few hundred $$ (I spent several thousand on those games working with remote designers/developers, marketing, etc). It was already really REALLY BAD. People would "re-skin" games, so they would make a game (or more often just steal one and re-package as their own) and replace graphics/audio to make it look different even though it was the same game. If I recall correctly some managed to have almost a hundred re-skins of the same game. Of course the more games you have as a publisher the higher you are in the search results/easier it is for you to get new installs. Click fraud was rampant even then, with cloned and fake SIMs, real and virtual devices, botnets... It was nearly impossible to make anything in that market back then so I folded around 2012. Of course it's loser's perspective, maybe somebody else has more optimistic take :-)
    • the_only_law 4y ago
      > It was already really REALLY BAD. People would "re-skin" games, so they would make a game (or more often just steal one and re-package as their own) and replace graphics/audio to make it look different even though it was the same game. If I recall correctly some managed to have almost a hundred re-skins of the same game Mobile games are a pit. Modern phones can run pretty impressive stuff now, hell iOS has Civ 6 and Total War Medieval 2 ports. But instead the stores seem to be filled with endless reskins of the same tired concepts as a decade ago. And then the ads are all lies. They'll legit just rip some footage from a well established and well liked PC game, say Age of Empires II, and use that in their ads when the actual game is just a shitty Clash of Clans ripoff.
• doix 4y ago
  During the very early days of Android (2010, I think) I made some terrible arcade games. They made about 100$ a month from ads and I sold the rights for distribution in Korea for 600$ a game to a company that no longer exists (ubi-nuri). Live wallpapers became a thing at some point, and I sold some procedure generated garbage for $0.99. I think I made somewhere between 3-4k GBP out of the whole thing. Then the market got very competitive, the "recently updated" section was removed and everything died immediately for me. I have no idea how you would get users now without an advertising budget.
• zorr 4y ago
  Around 2012-2013 (I think) I had an app where I had reverse engineered the Omnifocus sync protocol so you could "use Omnifocus" on an Android phone. After experimenting with pricing a bit I think I left it at $20 and consistently had a few sales per day for months. I have received zero complaints about the price. It was a simple one-off transaction for an app that solved one specific problem well. It wasn't serious money but a nice addition to my salary at the time. I highly doubt a price point like this can still be done in the current app environment.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    No, it could be done, if you could identify some little niche like that, and charge for it. Imagine some lawyer website or whatever that lawyers have to login into and it's an absolute PITA on Android, but you make an app that does that part for them, charge $100, done. (Obviously this example doesn't work, but that kind of thing).
• ryandvm 4y ago
  I made about $5K selling a live wallpaper that showed local weather radar. I originally just made it for myself, but then decided to release it on the app store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.radarlive&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.ra... I never marketed it properly though and so the bottom fell out of my sales to the point that I was making almost nothing from it, so I made it free. That was project that taught me that marketing is more important than technical achievement.
  • david422 4y ago
    I've made a few apps. Some were even quite popular. But eventually they all lost traction. So I agree - marketing is a _very_ large part of app development that I wasn't interested in/neglected. To make an app successful, it really needs to be _the_ focus, with constant support and updates.
  • giarc 4y ago
    Why not find someone and give them 50% cut of future revenue? You can show proof that it would make money, and there's no downside to you if they are able to extract more out of a dead app (unless it needs a bunch of updates and maintenance).
  • arlcode 4y ago
    Just a side question: Any reason you did restrict it by country? I suppose you have only data for certain locations so that would be the most logical explanation to me
    • ryandvm 4y ago
      No reason other than that it uses public domain imagery from the US National Weather Service. It could certainly have been expanded to use other countries' radar data if I had the resources.
• Humdeee 4y ago
  I've built and maintained a small series of iOS apps since early 2015 to learn Swift at the time. My latest release was 2020 and they're all quite simplistic functionally, albeit filling a niche. Monthly proceeds vary around $800-1500 now and I'm approaching the lifetime proceeds of $30k. I have no clue what the Android environment would be like now, but likely not as successful.
• urthor 4y ago
  Know a few. They were all gambling.
• desmondmcnamee 4y ago
  I have a gym logging app that’s currently making about $20k/month on Android. I think fitness is a bit of a unique market because, in my experience, people are more willing to spend money on it compared to other types of software. Last I checked we’re in the top 5 apps on the play store for our niche. https://www.hevyapp.com https://www.hevyapp.com
  • Melatonic 4y ago
    How do you make money? Ads Im guessing? Will check this out
    • desmondmcnamee 4y ago
      Zero ads. Subscriptions $3/month or $24/year
  • chourobin 4y ago
    curious, is this made with react native?
    • desmondmcnamee 4y ago
      Yes it is!
  • xwowsersx 4y ago
    App looks great, congrats. I've logged years and years in FitNotes. Any way to import my data from FitNotes into Hevy? I would guess not, but figured I'd ask!
  • Torwald 4y ago
    > I think fitness is a bit of a unique market because, in my experience, people are more willing to spend money on it compared to other types of software. It is one of 3 markets that are like that: health, dating/relationships, finances. "Fitness" as a concept pertains to the "dating/relationships" market and is therefore linked to the strongest motivator ie. gettig laid. It is also linked to health and for some it helps with their professional performance. So yeah, "fitness" hits a sweet spot there. But really, have a seriously useful app in either one these three and you can build a business around that.
• marban 4y ago
  Co-created the very first Twitter client even before the first physical device or an official app was available. Got acquired by Idealab around ~2010 + Made a decent income from a Pro version before that. Left the industry for all the reasons mentioned in other comments (and wouldn't go back).
• threeseed 4y ago
  > especially with the play store tax It's the cost of the acquisition channel not a tax. And if you want to build a successful business then you better understand the difference. Because these days you will likely need to pay for other channels as well e.g. SEO, Paid Ads, Referral, Influencer etc. And the challenge is how you can afford this when your app is only a few dollars. Which is why most newer startups are doing free apps with a subscription add-on.
  • CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > It's the cost of the acquisition channel not a tax. And if you want to build a successful business then you better understand the difference. I'm pretty sure the poster didn't mean it was literally a tax.
  • realharo 4y ago
    Question is, do any apps, other than a tiny percentage at the top, get a significant number of users that discover them via the app stores? My guess would be most apps are discovered through other channels, and then the user just clicks a link on a website that takes them to the app store. Or they already know the exact app they're looking for, and search for it by name directly. So the store doesn't provide any value in such cases, yet they still take the 15% or 30%.
• danamit 4y ago
  I had an income of 2-3k monthly from Facebook apps back in 2010s. I do not advice apps since you are at the mercy of the platform and their policies.
  • caleb-allen 4y ago
    My dad ran a business that was totally centered around Facebook and suffered heavily when Facebook flipped a switch and disabled many of the APIs supporting my dad's business
• giantg2 4y ago
  Nope. I tried monetizing one, but it was never that popular to begin with. So I made it free like my other one. I wish I was making money like these other commenters. I think that's very rare though.
• porbelm 4y ago
  Bertheussen IT, the company (one guy) behind Wordfeud, made millions. $20 million ish over a few years actually. https://proff.no/selskap/bertheussen-it-as/trondheim/dataprogramvare-og-utvikling/IGI9O1M009O/ https://proff.no/selskap/bertheussen-it-as/trondheim/datapro...
• moneywoes 4y ago
  Is app store SEO not very difficult? I feel maybe the Apple app store has more potential as there are more paying customers
• Torwald 4y ago
  You ask: "Is it very hard to do that" which is a bit ambiguous as a question. But here are some tips for starters: - Pick a niche for your app that is very nerdy, don't do something mainstream, that would make too mayn people interested in your offering. - Do not have a website or a youtube channel that helps people use your app. obscurity is absolutely crucial for your Android apps business success. - Please pick a very cheap price with a crummy number like, say, $4,97 to evaporate your margins. - Understand that consumers hate pretty icons and nicely animated user interfaces. Your app has to look like a Linux desktop of a guy, who feels most comfortable to be in terminal all day. - Please make the billing process a PITA, otherwise things would be too easy! Better yet, make sure I can't even buy your app in most countries! - Don't invest in graphics! Make the app icon ugly und undiscernable! - Likewise, don't think about marketing. It is important that you just upload the app and let the app store do it's magic! It works 100%! - Make sure you have no customer support. If you have good customer support, that could build trust and drive sales, something we do not want if we want to be successful. - Lastly, let's make sure you disrespect quality programmers. Buy cheap code from a third world country! The delivered software architecture that breaks with every OS update and additional bag of bugs will be a constant maintenance nightmare. And after all, we want to have dreams, right? - Oh, and don't make the app useful. Make it a gimmick that nobody really needs! Keep the above in mind and surely, becoming a millionaire garage style with programming Android apps will be a peace of cake!
  • webmaven 4y ago
    Use sarcasm in comments on HN! You'll be earning karma hand over fist!
• iasay 4y ago
  The money in the app market is making apps for other people who think they're going to get serious money. Or rarely are fronting an existing application and have a stable customer base already.
• ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  I know 2 solo devs making over 500k per month with apps. Highly niched and competitive space though so you won't really hear much from them.
  • doppp 4y ago
    Do you mind sharing what type of industry they are in?
    • ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      Unfortunately I'm not in a liberty to say. But what I realized is that it is not adjacent to common internet threads. It is out there in the real world kind of a thing.
      • doppp 4y ago
        B2B?
        • ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
          Yes
    • Grimburger 4y ago
      > so you won't really hear much from them What do you think the value proposition is for them to share this on the internet? HN upvotes?
  • webmaven 4y ago
    > I know 2 solo devs making over 500k per month with apps. You said "solo", so... each?
    • xeromal 4y ago
      That's how it reads to me.
    • 4y ago
• Ologn 4y ago
  In 2011 I had a discussion with an Android programmer who told me about a throw off but popular app he and others had written, and how much they had made with the ads they put on it (in my recollection it was hundreds of dollars at that point). That was motivating, but also put the idea in my head to go with ads, not pay apps. I made a little money in 2011, but in 2012 I started making better money. Admob ads only shows me back to September 2013 right now - from December 2013 to March 2014 I had a free book app that showed over $2000 a month in ads. It sometimes dipped but made over $2000 in January 2015 as well. I don't have access to all the revenue I made at the moment, but had a few apps reaching hundreds of dollars a month, whereas the book app could break $2000 a month. I had an idea of all expenses coming from revenues, so other than the initial $25 to Google and my time, all expenses came out of revenues. Initially all apps were on-phone with no backend. Initially I showed ads but did not run ads to advertise my apps. Initially I used the emulator and not a real phone. As I made money I bought a used Android device on Ebay (less than $100 with shipping), paid $10 a month for a backend web site (paying more later) and started advertising my apps, especially new apps, or new markets for old ones. It would probably be hard to have a successful app without advertising it to kick it off nowadays. In 2016 I started writing an app to get free wallpapers, which I wrote a series of blog posts about here - http://www.vartmp.com/dev/wallpapers.html http://www.vartmp.com/dev/wallpapers.html (I have it on my todo list to make that old site https in the coming months, it's easy enough to do but low priority). A link to the app is on that page. Actually there is a blog post to be written of August 3rd 2018 to spring 2019 of fixing up Kotlin code (which I was less familiar with then) and other things. Aside from watching the backend server stayed up I basically abandoned the app since spring 2019 since I was busy with work and did not advertise it - and that is when it finally started making money. It made $192 in September 2019 and over $240 a month from March to May 2020. Since August 2020 it has made over $50 each month without any ads or anything from my end, so it pays for its own backend hosting, domain name registration and so forth. My day job is working on an Android app for a large company. Over one million dollars a day in revenue goes over the app for the company I work for. I did my side apps while I was taking college classes and was not focused on a good-paying, full-time, non-contracting SWE job as much, which I am doing now. Aside from monitoring the backend server is up, I have basically abandoned my side apps since contracting and then being hired by my current company, as my TC dwarfs what I made on my side apps while taking more college courses (although making over $2000 a month on my side apps while taking college courses worked for me). The Wallpapers app I released over three years ago still brings in over $50 a month, with no effort at all (aside from the very minimal effort of monitoring its server is up) from me. Insofar as advice - for making money I favor ad-based apps over paid apps. The barrier to adoption are lower, less worries about piracy, and also you may not have a success until your second or third or fourth (etc.) app - I program Android full time and still haven't fully wrapped my head around things with a stable release from last year like Hilt and Compose, so there will probably be a learning curve for people less experienced. I would also advise on focusing on big markets over niche markets. There's more competition but it's harder to make money in most niche markets.
• nathias 4y ago
  Google
• WA 4y ago
  Every popular and useful app that also has an Android-version (Runtastic, Komoot, training apps, health apps) will have significant revenue coming from Android users in Europe, because the market share of Android in Europe is 70%. Yes, iOS users pay more easily for smaller apps (think special Camera apps), but if you create an app that provides value on a daily basis with a subscription model, you also make money on Android.
  • lawgimenez 4y ago
    Wow I have no idea Android has that large of a market share in Europe.
    • caleb-allen 4y ago
      Neither do many founders and executives of American companies. Snapchat is a prime example of a company/executive neglecting Android for years, at their own expense. Their international growth was extremely hampered until they finally refactored their Android app pretty heavily.
    • bakuninsbart 4y ago
      Generally lower wages, and a lot of people here dislike the "walled garden" approach to hardware. First one is more relevant though I think. Even the flagship Google phones are substantially cheaper than an IPhone. You can get a Xiaomi phone for 100€ that does everything a smart phone needs to do reasonably well.
• sgt 4y ago
  Selling Android apps is really hard. I haven't met any indie Android developer able to make a decent buck (or anything at all). Rather focus on iOS development if you want to actually make a profit. This is well known in the industry and a bit sad if you enjoy Android, but that's how it is and it has many reasons, such as user behavior.
• robgering 4y ago
  This isn't exactly what you're asking, but consultancies that produce mobile apps on behalf of clients can see significant revenue. This is particularly true for apps that require user-to-user interaction or other functionality requiring a decent amount of backend code. Unlike websites, which are largely commoditized by big players, custom apps still fetch large sums. The pros in this space charge project-based (or at least per diem) rates, so you'll need to be good at estimating your work.
• andix 4y ago
  The Google Play Store shows you an approximate number of installs. Check out some apps and multiply it with the price, then you have a rough estimate what people made with the app.
• kbridger3 4y ago
  It is still generally harder to make serious money from apps but possible. Also, games are very different than Apps. People are more willing to spend money on entertainment than apps. Some exceptions are dating, health, finance though. Back in 2014 and 2015, I launched an app on windows phone and android respectively. They both made a few thousand within a couple of months. I discontinued them, but mostly because the competition on Android was too much and I was unsure about the product strategy going forward. Fast-forward years later, and several of those competitors also shut down, leaving room for other apps in that space to grow and take more marketshare. I really think you have to just keep at it. I actually think Apps were difficult to make money from years ago but that was because several factors such as competition, consumer spending habits, lack of incentives from iOS/play stores. Now, I think things are a bit different: 1. Fewer apps as the tech sector has shifted to more cutting edge tech like crypto, etc. 2. Quality of apps have gone up 3. In-App purchases are very common as are Subscription models 4. People are more willing to spend on IAP and have gotten used to subscriptions 5. Stores have reduced taxes to %15 in some cases 6. People are using fewer apps these days, no more app explosion. But basically, you're app has to be high-quality and useful. Also, the main drivers for app installs are still the app stores themselves, so you have to optimize for the app store. Look into ASO ( app store optimization ). Also, expect to take a long-time to build up your audience. I'm attempting to launch a new app now, and going through this process. Regarding ios vs android, it's easier to make revenue on iOS for sure, but again, if your app is high-quality and useful i'm not sure it makes a big difference.
  • jdthedisciple 4y ago
    > Regarding ios vs android, it's easier to make revenue on iOS for sure, but again, if your app is high-quality and useful i'm not sure it makes a big difference. Why is it a "vs"? Why not just both? I thought so many tech stacks nowadays are more or less cross platform and make it relatively easy to ship to both or am I being naive?
  • ackbar03 4y ago
    Can you explain why dating, health, and finance are different? Another comment above just said the exact same thing. I sort of get dating and fitness but I've never used a finance app on my phone before
• mdavis6890 4y ago
  I really want an app-store filter for paid/free apps, where I can filter OUT the free apps. Anyone else? I feel like a big part of the problem is that the entire space is filled with junky 'free' apps, and getting to something high-quality is difficult. And so we're trained not to value apps because they're awful, and therefore not worth paying for anyway. A vicious cycle. If the apps are reasonable quality and solve a problem, what's $5 or even $10? Many people spend around that for a cup of coffee that will be gone in 30min. I'd happily pay that for a good app - if only I could find one. I'd LOVE to see super-cheap subscriptions too - like maybe ten cents or even less per month. This solves another issue: Once a dev has gotten most of the one-off sales they can, there's not much incentive to maintain the app. A subscription model is much better for this, but for most simple utility apps it needs to be very cheap.
  • sdk16420 4y ago
    There appear to be few good apps left that do not use a subscription model, and when they do, more often than not they charge at least €5/month, or a yearly €40 subscription. I remember around circa 2012, apps like Nova Launcher and Titanium backup were considered expensive, at €7 or so. Another example, I have a grandfathered subscription on Sleep Cycle for €2 a year, if you would take a new subscriptions it's €30 a year.
  • water554 4y ago
    So many people even on HN complain about something as trivial as a $1/mo price change (digital ocean). I don’t get the mentality but it exists. That’s a great idea about micro subscriptions. I wonder if the friction is the same between $1 and $0.10 though.
    • ipaddr 4y ago
      People have more than one server usually.
    • mdavis6890 4y ago
      Probably the friction scales more with transaction count than overall cost, so you're getting at a real issue. It would be a pain as a vendor to deal with a zillion little one-cent transactions. Still I think there are workarounds: Maybe I can pay Apple $20/mo for 2000 'points' that I spend on whatever subscriptions I want, and they pass the points/payments along in bulk to each vendor. Not sure.
• cwoolfe 4y ago
  Android and iOS app developer speaking. If you've got Android development skills, the easiest money would be to get a normal job with a normal company developing their app. If you're interested in long-term gains, invest 50% of your salary into index funds. They are are currently offered at a big discount because we're in a recession! Most of the mobile industry is normal companies who need developers for their app, in the same way they need developers for their website. The image of the lone app developer making some passion-project app and posting it up on the store to sell for millions gained some popularity because it's so inspirational, but that's not how most app developers make money, especially in 2022. The market is over-saturated. If you are more interested in a risky passion-project than a normal job, then the emerging market of VR gaming apps on Oculus still shows some promise.
• GTP 4y ago
  A friend of mine made some money with Android games. I don't know how much, but enough to buy a new car and rent an apartment.
  • giarc 4y ago
    That could be anywhere from $10k to $100m.
• aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Build a PWA.
• yccheok 4y ago
  It is still possible. I have been doing so for a few years, by focusing on single note taking app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yocto.wenote https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yocto.weno... Here's my take :- 1) Just like in other businesses, it is a competitive market. 2) However, it is also full of limitless opportunities. Google Play store helps you to reach worldwide end consumers. Only a few channels can do that with a frictionless payment system. Google Play store is one of them. 3) Since it is a highly competitive market, you need to know your niche and know who your targetted customers are very well. Then, we provide a solid solution to fit customer needs. 4) Play store tax is not a concern. Once you publish the app, the only main concern is how to market the app and how to pitch the app so that consumers will choose your app over the others. 5) With some luck, one will hit overnight success. But, the chance is rare. Most of the time, we need to invest a lot of resources, and success is not guaranteed.
  • jdthedisciple 4y ago
    Mind elaborating a bit? How is your app doing? What's your model - a free and a paid version or just ads?
    • yccheok 4y ago
      There are a few ways for us to make money. 1) We offer 1-time in-app purchases. The price tier ranged from $30.99 to $0.99 (We offer promo prices to users when they share the app with enough people) 2) We offer a monthly subscription model of $5 per month when the user requires better cloud storage to store their notes, image attachments, and voice recordings - https://www.wenote.me/cloud https://www.wenote.me/cloud 3) Every 1-time in-app purchase comes with a 7-day free trial. After 7 days of the free trial, we provide an option for users to watch video ads in exchange for additional 2 days of the free trial. 4) We decide not to show banner ads/ full-screen ads. Even though it will make us earn less, it will provide a better user experience, gaining a better user retention rate and better app reputation.
  • holgersindbaek 4y ago
    How did you market your app to the point that it has 1m+ downloads?
• mooktakim 4y ago
  I think the money is to build apps for others and not for yourself. You can charge a good day rate.